Obtaining information from WiFi access point (AP) databases can benefit positioning and navigation applications. In conventional approaches, information about the AP database requested may be provided to mobile clients without taking into account the requirements and capabilities of the mobile clients performing the positioning and navigation applications. In addition, in conventional approaches for building and maintaining the WiFi AP databases, a crowdsourcing server would periodically send instructions to all crowdsourcing mobile clients instructing them how to collect crowdsourcing data without taking into account the environment of the mobile clients. As a result, in some cases, excessive data may be sent to the mobile clients, which not only may waste valuable bandwidth and battery, it may also consume limited data storage space of the mobile clients. In some other cases, insufficient data may be sent to the mobile clients, which may adversely impact the user experience with the positioning and navigation applications. In yet some other cases, the mobile clients may upload excessive redundant crowdsourcing data to the server, which may cause the server to consume additional resources to search and extract useful data from the mobile clients.
Therefore, there is a need for methods and systems that can address the above issues of conventional solutions.